i8o THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
the rejection by social theory of the whole conception
of an objective standard of economic equity. The law
of nature had been invoked by mediaeval writers as a
moral restraint upon economic self-interest. By the
seventeenth century, a significant revolution had taken
place. " Nature" had come to connote, not divine
ordinance, but human^appetites, and natural rights
were invoked by"TK!e^m3ivicrualism of the age as a
reason why self-interest should be given free play.
The effect of these practical exigencies and intel-
lectual changes was seen in a reversal of policy on
the part of the State. In 1571 the Act of 1552, which
had prohibited all interest as " a vyce moste odyous
and detestable, as in dyvers places of the hollie Scrip-
ture it is evydent to be seen/' had been repealed, after
a debate in the House which revealed the revolt of the
plain man against the theorists who had triumphed
twenty years before, and his determination that the
law should not impose on business a Utopian morality.14
The exaction of interest ceased to be a criminal
offence, provided that the rate did not exceed ten
per cent., though it still remained open to a debtor,
in the improbable event of his thinking it expedient
to jeopardize his chance of future advances, to take
civil proceedings to recover any payment made in
excess of the principal. This qualified condonation of
usury on the part of the State naturally reacted upon
religious opinion. The Crown was,supreme ruler of the
Church of Christ, and it was not easy for a loyal Church
to be more fastidious than its head. Moderate interest,
if without legal protection, was at any rate not unlawful,
and it is difficult to damn with conviction vices of
which the degrees have been adjusted on a sliding
scale by an Act of Parliament, Objective economic
science was beginning its disillusioning career, in the
form of discussions on the rise in prices, the mechanism
of the money-market, and the balance of trade, by
publicists concerned, not to point a moral, but to analyse'